Disclaimer: All characters, however neglected, belong to the Tolkien estate. Un beta-ed, please enjoy and review :)
A/N: This piece is written as the other side of the coin for the "Morgoth's Ring" tale "Athrabeth, Finrod ah Andreth". Finarfin's youngest struggle with their choices.
"Nay, Adaneth, if any marriage can be between our kindred and thine, then it shall be for some high purpose of Doom. Brief it will be and hard at the end. Yea, the least cruel fate that could befall would be that death should end it soon." - Finrod Finarfinion
The Least Cruel fate
We sat around our fire, huddled together as much against the sounds of the night as the cold.
"Such things are not meant to be," I said to him. "least not for us. You cannot hope for such an end! We are different. Would you desert our purpose to go back to her then? If so, then why did we leave Valinor?"
"I do not remember, why…tell me again."
As he spoke, I looked in to his eyes, and saw age beyond our years. An "oldness" had taken hold of him, as it does with Them, when their short time reaches it's end. How like Them he had become. It would please our older brother. Had the circumstances been otherwise, I would have laughed at this thought. I shook my head and came back to our conversation, to my attempt to change his mood, convince him, even...
"To become great warriors!" I cried, "To vanquish Morgoth, not for the baubles of our cousins, but to make the world safe for those who come after us. For your children. For hers!"
"Would that they were the same." He sighed
He turned his back to me, and though he made no sound, I knew my brother wept.
They say the First Born feel love and happiness, sorrow and sadness more fiercely than the children of Man. I thanked the Valar then, that I had never known a love like his. For I would not be gripped by the despair that now encased my brother. Inside me, I, too, wept. For both of them, and for what we, all of us, knew could never be.
